Unless otherwise indicated herein, the materials described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Safety is a major concern for operators of construction equipment. For example, since 1992, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has tracked fatal workplace accidents in its Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI). As the CFOI details, the number of worker fatalities has ranged between 4,551 per year and 6,632 per year from 1992 to 2012. A significant percentage of these deaths occur as a result of accidents involving construction equipment.
One reason for accidents is that workers on the ground, or innocent bystanders, are struck by construction equipment or caught between and pinched or crushed by pieces of construction equipment. This can occur when a construction vehicle operator's vision is reduced by a blind area. A blind area, or blind spot, is the area around a vehicle or piece of construction equipment that is not visible to the operator by direct line-of-sight, via a camera, or indirectly by use of mirrors. These dangers are further exacerbated by frequent relocation of construction equipment on, off, and/or around a worksite as a project progresses because the frequent movement may cause areas of the worksite that fall within the operator's blind spots to change as the location of the equipment on the worksite changes from hour-to-hour or day-to-day, as the case may be. A list of various construction vehicles with information relating to their respective blind spots is maintained by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, currently found at: www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/highwayworkzones/BAD/imagelookup.html.
Federal regulations recognize and attempt to address the problem of construction equipment blind spots. For example, the Code of Federal Regulations, at Title 29 C.F.R. Section 1926.1424, addresses swing work area controls where the equipment's rotating superstructure (whether permanently or temporarily mounted) poses a reasonably foreseeable risk of (i) striking and injuring an employee or (ii) pinching/crushing an employee against another part of the equipment or another object. In either of these cases, federal regulations require employers to train each employee assigned to work on or near the equipment how to recognize struck-by and pinch/crush hazard areas posed by the rotating superstructure. Employers must also erect and maintain control lines, warning lines, railings or similar barriers to mark the boundaries of the hazard areas. However, despite these regulations, 16% of occupational fatalities in 2012 (or approximately 740 deaths—over 2 deaths each work day) were a result of the victim's contact with objects and equipment according to CFOI. Thus, despite the safety measures required by the regulations and the ready availability of railings or similar barriers for use in blocking off safe zones around equipment, the threat of death or serious bodily injury from construction machinery remains high. Accordingly, there exists a clear need for safety systems that are effective in reducing the risk of death and serious bodily harm, fast and easy to implement, and convenient to stow away when the construction machinery is not in use.